Page 11 of The Manticore's Human Queen
“No,” she counters, her voice gentle but firm, refusing my dismissal. She finally looks up, her intelligent green eyesmeeting mine. “The others are from claws, from blades. They are the marks of a warrior. But this one…” Her gaze is so direct, so full of a quiet empathy it feels like a physical touch on my soul. “This one feels different. It’s the reason for your silence, isn’t it?”
My brothers would never ask such a thing. We all carry our ghosts, and we have a silent, unspoken pact to let them lie. Her question is a violation of that sacred law, a trespass into the one part of my soul I keep locked away from the world. My first instinct is to snarl, to retreat behind the wall of the beast she first saw.
“You speak of things you do not understand,” I say, my voice harsher than I intend.
She does not flinch. She does not pull away. She simply holds my gaze, her own unwavering. “Perhaps,” she concedes. “Or perhaps I understand cages better than you think. Not all of them are made of iron, Tarek. Some are made of silence.”
Her words strike me with the force of a physical blow. She has seen right through me. She has looked past the monster, past the warrior, and has seen the prisoner within. The urge to reinforce my defenses, to push her away with a cruel word, dies in my throat. For the first time in years, I feel the walls of my own fortress begin to crumble.
I let out a long, slow breath I do not realize I have been holding. The admission is a profound act of vulnerability, a crack in the armor I have worn for so long.
“Some wounds,” I say, my voice barely a whisper, “are not meant for the light of day.”
I expect her to see me then as a broken, tragic thing. I expect pity, or perhaps a new and more sensible fear.
But Annelise simply meets my gaze, her own eyes clear and steady. “Then I am not afraid of the dark.”
Her words, her simple, absolute acceptance of all that I am, are a more powerful healing balm than any of her elven salves.She is not trying to fix me. She is not trying to save me. She is simply offering to sit with me in the ruins.
The shame, the grief, the loneliness that has been my constant companion—it all recedes, just for a moment, in the face of her unwavering, courageous, beautiful empathy.
My chest tightens, a new, almost painful sensation, as if a long-frozen part of me is beginning to thaw. This small, fragile, impossibly strong woman makes me admit a truth I have not known myself until this very moment.
“You see me,” I whisper.
And in the shared darkness of the menagerie, for the first time in a very long time, I am not a monster or a broken soldier.
I am simply Tarek.
14
ANNELISE
His strength is returning. I feel it under my hands, a deep, resonant power thrumming back to life in the hard muscle of his leg. The raw, mangled ruin of flesh and bone I first tended to is slowly, miraculously, mending into a landscape of new scars and coiled strength. The beast I found, broken and bleeding in the straw, is transforming back into the warrior he is meant to be. And the change in him is changing me.
His healing is a testament to my own secret rebellion, a tangible result of my defiance. Every stolen moment, every smuggled bandage, is a small victory against the suffocating emptiness of my life.
I feel lightheaded with the danger of it, with the reckless, beautiful audacity of what we are doing together. The wounded patient I am caring for is becoming a formidable ally, and the shift in our dynamic is as exhilarating as it is frightening.
The bars of his cage seem more fragile with every passing day, and the possibility of his freedom—of our freedom—feels more real, more attainable, than ever before.
Tonight, after a particularly grueling dinner, I flee to the menagerie. The world outside his cage is a nightmare of veiledthreats and certain pain. Zarren's words still echo in my ears, his voice a low, proprietary purr as he’d leaned close at the table, a cruel smirk playing on his lips.
"I do hope you don't scream too much on our wedding night, little pet. It's so unbecoming. Though I suppose a bit of a struggle does make the conquest all the more satisfying."
Now, in the honest darkness of the menagerie, I feel an odd sense of safety. Tarek is standing when I arrive, not leaning against the back wall, but standing in the center of his cage, his massive frame radiating an intimidating, godly energy.
He sees the terror in my eyes, the fresh horror I carry from the feast hall, and he moves closer to the bars, his presence a silent, unwavering, protective shield. The contrast between the two males—the cruel, preening boy who is to be my husband, and the silent, honorable warrior who is my fellow prisoner—is a stark and brutal reality.
Without thinking, driven by a need so profound it bypasses all of my carefully constructed defenses, I lean my forehead against the cold iron of his cage, my own body trembling. He does not speak.
He simply stands there, his warmth a tangible, grounding force on the other side of the bars. The simple, solid reality of him is an anchor in the chaotic storm of my life. In his presence, the terror begins to recede, replaced by a feeling I have never known before.
“I have never felt safe in my entire life,” I whisper, the confession a raw, ragged thing. “Not once. Until now. With you.”
A low growl rumbles in his chest, a sound not of aggression, but of a deep, possessive, utterly primal empathy. He reaches a hand through the bars, his large, scarred fingers gently touching my cheek.
The touch is a fire that sears through the cold iron, through the years of my own lonely fear. I turn my face into his hand, myeyes closing, and I lean into him, the bars pressing into my skin, a cruel but necessary barrier.
